GIFT  OF 
Prof,  J.  W.   Th  amps  en 


CASE 
B 


CLUB      «-, 
PAPERS     1 


THE  WORK  OF 
TAGORE 


CHICAGO 
LITERARY 
LUB 


THE  WORK  OF  TAGORE 


THE  WORK  OF  TAGORE 


BY 
EDWIN  HERBERT  LEWIS 


CHICAGO  LITERARY  CLUB 

1917 


THE  WORK  OF  TAGORE 

HE  only  time  before  this  when 
I  ventured  to  say  anything  in 
this  presence  was  more  than 
four  years  ago,  when  I  spoke 
of  Will  Moody's  treatment 
of  the  Promethean  theme. 
Shortly  afterward  Sir  Rabin- 
dranath  and  his  son  Ratin- 
dranath  were  our  guests  here.  They  dined 
with  some  of  us,  and  afterwards  listened  with 
pleasure  to  Mr.  Legler's  paper  on  Whitman. 
Two  years  later  their  friend,  Dr.  J.  C.  Bose, 
eminent  in  electricity  and  in  physiology,  was 
here,  and  listened  appreciatively  to  Dr.  John- 
son's paper  on  the  physiological  problem  of 
life.  All  these  names  —  Whitman,  Moody, 
Tagore,  and  Bose  —  seem  to  bear  on  the  cen- 
tral problem  of  democracy.  We  all  feel  that 
problem.  I  will  try  to  state  it  in  familiar  but 
not  political  words.  Is  it  the  chief  end  of 
man  to  glorify  God  and  enjoy  Him  for  ever, 
or  is  it  his  chief  end  to  subdue  the  earth  and 
all  that  in  it  is? 


Moody  approached  the  problem  from  the 
Greek  end.  Prometheus  is  man  wresting  fire 
from  heaven.  He  is  man  subduing  not  only 
the  earth,  but  God.  By  mastering  the  light- 
ning instead  of  praying  to  it,  he  lengthens  his 
arm  till  it  strikes  a  harder  blow  than  the  thun- 
derbolt. Then  he  ceases — or  seems  to  cease — 
to  need  Zeus.  He  is  independent  of  Zeus,  and 
the  priests  of  Zeus,  and  the  king  who  gets  his 
divine  right  from  Zeus,  and  the  armies  that 
get  their  right  from  king  and  priest.  So  west- 
ern democracy  began,  and  so  it  continued.  It 
proceeded  till  the  French  Revolution  cried, 
"Hang  the  last  king  with  the  entrails  of  the 
last  priest."  Again  and  again  you  see  king, 
priest,  and  army  lined  up  to  resist  the  prophet 
armed  with  threats  and  the  workman  armed 
with  a  machine.  And  when  a  canny  workman 
saves  up  money  enough  to  buy  an  army  of 
machines,  so  that  he  becomes  a  sort  of  king 
himself,  he  has  to  meet  the  attacks  of  those 
who  were  his  fellow  workmen.  In  some  such 
guise  does  democracy  appear  from  the  Greek 
angle. 

That  it  should  so  appear  is  due  to  causes  far 
recessive,  of  which  only  one  need  here  be  men- 
tioned. Had  tools  been  allowed  to  evolve  con- 
tinuously, as  labor-saving  devices  and  emanci- 
pators of  the  spirit,  no  such  duel  of  technol- 
ogy and  ideals  need  have  appeared.  But  cattle 
intervened  and  interrupted.  These  movable, 
capturable,  unearned  increments  lured  the 


conqueror  down  from  the  mountains.  Cattle 
are  capital,  and  herds  are  pecuniary  consid- 
erations. From  Kassite  Babylonia  to  Austrian 
Bosnia  money  has  complicated  industry  and 
precipitated  war.  A  coin,  cuneus,  is  a  wedge, 
and  splits.  A  coin  is  itself  a  machine,  and  not 
merely  a  wedge,  but  a  sort  of  storage  battery 
for  the  lightning.  And  the  peaceful  fennel 
stalk  of  Prometheus  easily  becomes  a  gun. 

But  Tagore  tells  us  that  the  civilization  of 
Greece  was  nurtured  within  city  walls.  "The 
West,"  he  says,  "seems  to  take  a  pride  in 
thinking  it  is  subduing  nature,  as  if  we  were 
living  in  a  hostile  world  where  we  have  to 
wrest  everything  from  an  unwilling  and  alien 
arrangement  of  things.  This  sentiment  is  the 
product  of  the  city-wall  habit  and  training  of 
mind." x  He  tells  us  that  when  European 
settlers  invaded  America  there  ensued  a 
struggle  with  primeval  forests,  but  that  the 
forests,  the  great  living  cathedrals  of  nature, 
conveyed  to  the  conqueror  no  deep  signifi- 
cance. 'They  brought  him  wealth  and  power, 
and  perhaps  at  times  ministered  to  his  enjoy- 
ment of  beauty  or  inspired  a  solitary  poet,  but 
they  never  acquired  a  sacred  association  in  the 
hearts  of  men  as  the  place  of  a  great  spiritual 
reconcilement,  where  man's  soul  had  its  meet- 
ing place  with  the  soul  of  the  world.'  2  He 
does  not  suggest  that  things  should  have  been 
otherwise,  for  America  doubtless  has  a  valu- 

1  Sadhana,  p.  5.  2  Sadhana,  p.  12. 


able  experience  to  relate,  but  he  says  that  the 
early  conquerors  of  India  were  assimilated  to 
the  forest.  Not  conquest  and  possession  of 
nature,  but  enjoyment  of  her,  union  with  her, 
is  India's  contribution. 

The  forest  did  indeed  inspire  our  solitary 
poets,  and  none  more  than  Whitman.  But 
Whitman  loved  the  locomotive,  too.  In  a 
somewhat  sprawling  fashion  he  attempted  the 
straddle — to  love  God's  world  and  also  the 
conquest  of  it.  He  cheered  lustily  when  any 
democrat  succeeded  in  subduing  a  bit  of  the 
forest,  but  in  his  day  there  was  enough  of  it 
left  for  him  to  loaf  in  and  invite  his  soul. 

What  the  far  future  of  the  earth's  surface 
will  be,  no  man  can  say.  Intrinsically  it 
would  seem  that  a  ball  of  rock  eight  thousand 
miles  thick  could  not  be  entirely  conquered 
and  put  to  any  known  physiological  use  of 
any  breed  of  organisms  produced  by  the 
weathering  of  its  surface.  We  happened  along 
when  the  distribution  of  heat  and  carbon 
dioxide  reached  a  certain  delicate  balance, 
we,  the  walking  bits  of  a  thin  film  called  life. 
No  one  of  us  is  ever  likely  to  own  the  whole 
thing,  much  less  tear  down  the  sunset  and  ex- 
hibit it  at  ten  cents  a  head.  But  it  does  look 
as  if  in  time  every  acre  of  the  surface  would 
carry  a  sign  of  no  trespass,  and  every  discov- 
erable vein  of  oil,  coal,  iron,  copper,  lead,  tin, 
zinc,  gold,  silver,  and  platinum  would  be 
gnawed  out  and  used  to  increase  the  general 


tension  of  social  relations.  The  acres  of  our 
plains  will  be  cultivated  inch  by  inch  with  in- 
struments made  of  metals,  and  yet  the  cities 
will  be  larger  than  ever.  Under  such  condi- 
tions, how  much  chance  is  there  likely  to  be 
for  communion  with  a  hypothetical  personal- 
ity whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
and  the  round  ocean,  and  the  living  air,  and 
in  the  mind  of  man? 

The  progress  of  the  machine  industry  has 
made  all  our  western  thinking  technological. 
To  subdue  the  refractory  earth  we  have 
learned  that  exact  micrometric  methods  are 
essential.  Chemistry,  physics,  biology  are  all 
mere  phases  of  that  intimate  struggle  of  man 
with  his  own  mother.  In  the  course  of  the 
process  he  learns  to  recognize  frankly  enough 
his  continuity  with  her.  To  the  eye  of  the 
chemist  this  room  contains  only  atoms,  to  the 
eye  of  the  physicist  only  electrons,  to  the  eye 
of  the  biologist  only  cells.  The  constellation 
of  these  units  into  some  forty  men  can  hardly 
conceal  from  the  scientist  the  deeper  reality — 
or  at  least  his  deeper  reality —  of  which  the 
bodies  are  for  him  mere  appearances.  But 
our  scientific  recognition  of  the  continuity 
does  not  arouse  in  us  any  new  mysticism.  The 
atom  does  not  yearn  for  the  universe,  the  elec- 
tron sends  no  look  of  passionate  desire  to  the 
stars,  and  the  cell  does  not  adore  the  world- 
wide bubble  to  which  it  belongs. 

I  take  it  that  the  western  method  has,  how- 


ever,  some  value,  even  in  its  defect.  Imagine 
a  highly  intelligent  man  so  deeply  imbued 
with  scientific  method  that  he  made  it  his 
metaphysic.  He  would  sincerely  regard  his 
own  body  and  mind  as  a  mechanism,  and  an 
ethics  would  illogically  but  inevitably  follow ; 
he  would  try  to  live  up  to  his  conviction.  He 
would  be  keenly  aware  of  his  continuity  with 
nature,  and  would  have  no  desire  to  conquer 
her  in  his  own  interest.  He  would  become 
impersonal  and  impartial  to  so  high  a  degree 
that  his  atheism  would  almost  coincide  with 
the  theism  of  Christ.  Freed  from  egotism  he 
would  render  to  all  a  service  as  perfect  as  that 
of  sunlight.  All  this  if  the  organism  were 
highly  intelligent  in  every  sense  of  the  word. 
But  in  a  less  happy  instance  the  result  might 
be  the  opposite.  If  his  sense  of  continuity 
freed  him  from  social  conscience,  if  he  were 
persuaded  that  because  men  are  chemical 
machines  they  have  no  rights,  if  a  natural  in- 
stinct of  conquest  seemed  to  him  the  inevitable 
voice  of  nature,  then  he  would  be  a  deadly 
and  undemocratic  creature. 

Neither  unqualified  type  can  exist  in  fact, 
for  no  person  can  become  utterly  impersonal, 
nor  can  any  man  escape  the  ideals  which  are 
the  sole  meaning  of  our  physiological  pro- 
cesses. But  you  see  in  every  man  to-day  the 
struggle  between  mechanism  and  ideals.  To 
one  statesman  (or  general,  or  engineer,  or 
physician,  or  clergyman,  or  educator)  machin- 


ery  is  a  servant,  to  another  it  is  a  master.  In 
one  it  increases  benevolence,  in  another  tyr- 
anny. We  see  excess  of  statistics,  we  see  blind- 
ness to  statistics.  We  see  excess  of  organiza- 
tion, and  lack  of  organization.  We  believe 
that  religion  should  be  democratic,  but  it  is 
hard  to  get  the  democrats  to  church.  And  so 
it  goes.  We  westerners  are  all  on  the  straddle. 
We  cannot  give  up  Zeus,  and  we  won't  go  back 
on  Prometheus.  Naturally  our  comments  on 
the  present  mixup  in  Europe  are  unimportant. 
We  know  in  a  dim  way  that  it  is  a  struggle  of 
democracy  with  status,  but  as  we  neither  be- 
lieve deeply  in  the  brotherhood  of  man  nor 
have  tried  deeply  to  understand  our  own  prob- 
lems, we  are  up  a  stump. 

Now  in  contrast  to  all  this  way  of  thinking 
we  have  Tagore's  way.  I  fancy  that  many  of 
us  have  regarded  Hindu  thought  as  peculiarly 
monistic  when  it  was  n't  peculiarly  polytheis- 
tic. There  have  been  in  India,  as  there  have 
been  in  the  West,  men  who  felt  that  the  visible 
world  was  at  once  unreal,  illusory,  and  con- 
temptible, but  that  every  one  of  its  appear- 
ances is  merged  in  a  reality  that  is  invisible, 
indivisible,  and  admirable.  This  statement 
does  not  define  every  sort  of  absolutistic  mo- 
nism, but  Shankara,  Plato,  Lucretius,  Hegel, 
Bradley,  Royce,  and  Mrs.  Eddy  —  the  list  is 
really  not  intended  as  satire  —  have  treated 
the  visible  world  as  less  real  than  the  imag- 
ined. Back  of  the  vision  called  the  landscape 


lay  something  indescribable  and  ineffable,  or 
grained  with  atoms,  or  warmed  with  love,  or 
simply  a  gray  and  neutral  wholeness  in  which 
all  distinctions  vanished.  But  Tagore  does 
not  belong  with  those  people.  He  is  a  great 
Brahmo,  the  son  of  a  great  Brahmo,  the  grand- 
son of  a  great  Brahmo.  His  family  revolted 
alike  from  monism  and  from  polytheism. 

They  conceived  God  in  the  older  Hindu 
way,  as  present  in  all  nature  and  yet  as  per- 
sonal. That  is  the  hardest  of  theologies  to 
manage,  and  the  balance  is  equally  hard  in 
science.  Dr.  Bose  keeps  it,  for  he  applies 
exact  electrical  methods  of  investigation  to 
plants,  finds  their  functions  parallel  with 
those  of  animals,  and  is  filled  with  joy  that 
he  and  the  flowers  are  alike  children  of  God. 
It  is  no  accident  that  Bose  turned  from  his  in- 
dependent invention  of  wireless  telegraphy  to 
the  study  of  plants,  for  India's  strength  has 
lain  in  her  sympathetic  care  of  plants  and  ani- 
mals. And  in  theology  and  art  Tagore  keeps 
the  same  balance  curiously  well.  Formal 
logic  never  prevents  him  from  the  exercise  of 
free  symbolism.  It  is  not  logical  to  call  the 
earth  a  footstool  and  then  instantly  regard  it 
as  a  depth,  but  you  forget  it  when  Tagore  says 
to  God: 

Here  is  thy  footstool  and  there  rest  thy  feet 
where  live  the  poorest,  and  lowliest,  and  lost. 

When  I  try  to  bow  to  thee,  my  obeisance  can- 
not reach  down  to  the  depth  where  thy  feet  rest 
among  the  poorest,  and  lowliest,  and  lost.1 

1Gitanjali,  poem  10. 


Western  pantheism  and  pancosmism  and 
immanentism  are  rarely  personal.  To  Spinoza 
all  things  are  modes  of  God,  and  therefore 
man  is  immortal,  and  action  should  proceed 
from  intellectual  love  of  eternal  laws.  But 
Spinoza  does  not  pray.  Wordsworth  recog- 
nizes the  presence  whose  dwelling  is  the  light 
of  setting  suns,  but  you  do  not  catch  him  ex- 
changing confidences  with  it.  Tennyson  cries, 

Speak  to  him,  for  he  hears,  and  spirit  with  spirit 

can  meet, 
Closer  is  he  than  breathing,  and  nearer  than 

hands  and  feet, 

and  yet  in  two  hundred  thousand  lines  Tenny- 
son addresses  him  only  a  half  dozen  times  at 
the  most.  But  Tagore  speaks  directly  to  God 
in  almost  all  the  poems  of  his  maturity.  He 
even  takes  liberties  with  God.  Thus  he  says: 

This  autumn  morning  is  tired  with  excess  of 
light,  and  if  your  songs  grow  fitful  and  languid 
give  me  your  flute  awhile. 

I  shall  but  play  with  it  as  the  whim  takes 
me, —  now  take  it  on  my  lap,  now  touch  it  with 
my  lips,  now  keep  it  by  my  side  on  the  grass. 

But  in  the  solemn  evening  stillness  I  shall 
gather  flowers,  to  deck  it  with  wreaths,  I  shall 
fill  it  with  fragrance;  I  shall  worship  it  with  the 
lighted  lamp. 

Then  at  night  I  shall  come  to  you  and  give 
you  back  your  flute. 

You  will  play  on  it  the  music  of  midnight 
when  the  lonely  crescent  moon  wanders  among 
the  stars.1 


1  Fruit-Gathering,  poem 
9 


This  is  real  with  the  man.  I  have  chal- 
lenged him  to  show  that  it  is  not  chiefly  art 
for  art's  sake,  and  have  left  off  abashed,  con- 
vinced by  the  nature  and  manner  of  his  replies 
that  these  experiences  are  the  very  tissue  of 
his  daily  life.  He  has  himself  summed  up  his 
apologia  in  these  words:  "drunk  with  the  joy 
of  singing,  I  forget  myself  and  call  thee  friend 
who  art  my  lord."  1 

Few  westerners  are  capable  of  that  sort  of 
thing.  We  hear  something  remotely  like  it  in 
church,  we  hear  something  genuinely  like  it 
from  the  lips  of  an  occasional  man  or  woman 
or  child,  but  we  are  too  busy  with  thoughts 
and  things  and  permanent  possibilities  of  sen- 
sation to  keep  up  a  real  acquaintance  with  an 
invisible  person.  If  before  taking  the  ether 
or  hearing  the  physician's  report  we  instinc- 
tively breathe  a  prayer,  the  thing  is  so  in- 
frequent that  it  must  surprise  the  person  ad- 
dressed. And  yet  in  fact  man  is  not  the  secure 
animal  he  fancies  himself,  ingeniously  refash- 
ioning the  earth  in  broad  daylight.  He  is  a 
precarious  thing,  muddling  in  the  dark  among 
enemies.  He  needs  a  friend. 

Tagore  made  a  great  hit  with  American 
women,  partly  because  he  is  so  unlike  the 
average  swami  who  appears  with  the  latest 
revelation  to  enchant  white-gloved  audiences. 
And  especially  he  scored  with  his  flair  for 
childish  psychology,  and  his  exquisite  love  of 

1  Gitanjali,  poem  2. 

10 


children.  The  man  who  stood  up  in  Orches- 
tra Hall  and  poured  out  vials  of  white  wrath 
is  the  man  who  manages  quite  simply  to  link 
the  baby  with  the  whole  majestic  organism  of 
nature. 

Why  are  those  tears  in  your  eyes,  my  child? 

How  horrid  of  them  to  be  always  scolding 
you  for  nothing. 

You  have  stained  your  fingers  and  face  with 
ink  while  writing  —  is  that  why  they  call  you 
dirty? 

0,  fie!  Would  they  dare  call  the  full  moon 
dirty  because  it  has  smudged  its  face  with  ink? 

For  every  little  trifle  they  blame  you,  my 
child.  They  are  ready  to  find  fault  for  nothing. 

You  tore  your  clothes  while  playing  —  is  that 
why  they  call  you  untidy? 

0,  fie!  What  would  they  call  an  autumn 
morning  that  smiles  through  its  ragged  clouds? 

Take  no  heed  of  what  they  say  to  you,  my 
child. 

They  make  a  long  list  of  your  misdeeds. 

Everybody  knows  how  you  love  sweet  things  — 
is  that  why  they  call  you  greedy? 

0,  fie !  What  would  they  call  us  who  love  you.1 

Being  primarily  an  artist,  an  artist  with  a 
very  perfect  sense  of  the  value  of  words, 
Tagore  did  not  lecture  us  on  his  first  trip.  He 
came  to  see  his  son,  whom  he  educated  in 
scientific  agriculture  at  the  University  of  Illi- 
nois. Yet  in  one  lecture,  given  at  the  Univer- 
sity of  Chicago  and  repeated  at  Harvard,  he 
could  not  refrain  from  saying:  "The  modern 

1  The  Crescent  Moon,  p.  20. 
11 


civilisation  of  the  west,  by  all  its  organised 
efforts,  is  trying  to  turn  out  men  perfect  in 
physical,  intellectual,  and  moral  efficiency  . . . 
They  are  ever  disciplining  themselves  to  fight 
nature  and  other  races;  their  armaments  are 
getting  more  and  more  stupendous  every  day; 
their  machines,  their  appliances,  their  organi- 
sations go  on  multiplying  at  an  amazing 
rate."  x  All  this,  he  admitted,  is  a  splendid 
achievement,  but  declared  that  it  is  not  the 
realization  of  life. 

He  went  home,  and  they  gave  him  the  Nobel 
prize.  Like  many  others,  I  wrote  congratula- 
tions. He  replied:  "The  prize  will  be  of  very 
great  help  to  my  school,  but  the  honour  has 
proved  to  be  a  very  great  burden  to  myself, 
which  I  must  accept  humbly  and  without  com- 
plaining, bearing  in  mind  that  it  is  the  first 
greeting  of  sympathy  and  respect  that  has 
come  to  the  east  from  the  west  in  the  modern 
time."  Now  Nobel,  as  you  all  recall,  was  the 
inventor  of  dynamite,  and  believed  that  dyna- 
mite would  render  war  so  dangerous  that  men 
would  shrink  from  it.  He  was  mistaken,  and 
it  is  slowly  becoming  clear  that  no  technical 
equipment  of  any  human  instinct  will  change 
the  instinct. 

Tagore  devoted  himself  in  the  following 
year  to  his  school,  which  often  takes  the  re- 
fractory pupils  from  other  schools  and  with- 
out military  discipline  absorbs  them,  changes 

1  Sadhana,  p.  13. 

12 


them  into  loyal  citizens  of  a  beloved  commu- 
nity. Just  before  the  war  broke  out  he  was  in 
the  hills,  resting,  and  wishing — as  his  father 
before  him  had  wished — that  he  need  never 
descend  to  the  plain  again.  If  his  father  had 
remained  there  in  1858  and  thenceforth,  there 
would  have  been  no  poet  born  in  1861.  But 
presently  Sir  Rabindranath  was  seized  with  a 
sense  that  his  work  was  not  done.  He  must 
back  to  the  plain,  and  do  what  he  could  to 
persuade  young  India  to  keep  the  right  line  of 
development  —  social  cooperation,  and  not 
mere  political  freedom,  or  economic  exploita- 
tion, conflict,  and  rivalry.  The  call  seemed  to 
come  to  him  as  from  a  clear  sky,  with  a  force 
which  refused  to  be  ignored.  In  great  reluc- 
tance he  sat  down  and  wrote: 

The  trumpet  lies  in  the  dust. 

The  wind  is  weary,  the  light  is  dead  .  .  . 

I  was  on  my  way  to  the  temple  with  my  even- 
ing offerings,  seeking  for  a  place  of  rest  .  .  . 
when  I  found  thy  trumpet  lying  in  the  dust. 

Was  it  not  the  hour  for  me  to  light  my  even- 
ing lamp?  .  .  . 

I  was  certain  my  wanderings  were  over  and 
my  debts  all  paid,  when  suddenly  I  came  upon 
thy  trumpet  lying  in  the  dust. 

Strike  my  drowsy  heart  with  thy  spell  of 
youth!  .  .  . 

Sleep  is  no  more  for  me  —  my  walk  shall  be 
through  showers  of  arrows  .  .  . 

For  tonight  thy  trumpet  shall  be  sounded!  * 

1  Abridged  from  Fruit-Gathering,  poem  xxxv. 
13 


This  poem  appeared  in  the  Times  soon  after 
the  war  broke  out,  and  was  taken  to  be  his 
approval  of  England's  course.  But  when  he 
wrote  it  he  had  no  immediate  apprehension  of 
war. 

When  now  it  proved  to  be  a  long  war  he 
feared  that  America  might  be  drawn  into  it, 
as  Japan  had  been,  and  that  later  Japan  and 
America  might  find  within  themselves  the  ma- 
terials and  occasion  of  another.  He  had  no 
hope  that  any  word  of  his  might  check  any- 
thing ;  he  believed  that  nationalism  would  be- 
come more  and  more  impassioned  and  pas- 
sionate. Yet  he  went  to  Japan  and  thence  to 
America,  deivering  a  lecture  called  the  "Cult 
of  Nationalism,"  a  lecture  which  will  appear 
in  the  March  Atlantic.  The  fire  shut  up  in  his 
bones  flamed  out.  The  nation,  he  said,  which 
should  be  the  embodiment  of  a  people's  hu- 
manest  ideals,  the  organization  of  its  finest 
contributions  to  the  world,  has  become  the 
organized  selfishness  of  a  people.  It  is  im- 
personal. It  is  a  machine.  It  does  not  repre- 
sent the  goodness  of  the  humane  individuals 
who  compose  the  essential  nation.  It  has  no 
humane  power  to  discriminate.  It  is  a  ma- 
chine of  power,  bent  only  on  emulation  of 
other  like  machines  in  worldliness.  And  now 
these  mechanisms  are  going  mad.  We  see  the 
last  act  of  the  tragedy  of  what  is  unreal. 

Had  I  the  manuscript  of  this  great  lecture 
at  hand,  a  large  part  of  what  I  have  said  would 

14 


be  quite  superfluous.  For  never  was  there  an 
arraignment  of  mechanical  organization  so 
competent,  so  eloquent,  so  impressive  as  this. 
But  commenting  on  it  an  American  newspaper 
said  that  no  message  stood  a  chance  of  getting 
across  to  us  unless  it  was  delivered  in  a  bass 
voice.  A  bass  voice!  Did  we  listen  to  the 
bass  voice  of  that  terrible  old  man,  half  demo- 
crat and  half  despot,  James  J.  Hill,  when  he 
warned  us  against  excess  of  industrialism? 
No.  Many  a  voice  has  bassed  our  trespass 
unregarded.  And  as  for  tenor  voices,  my 
recollection  is  that  the  voice  in  Horeb,  on  the 
interesting  occasion  when  wind  and  earth- 
quake and  fire  passed  without  revealing  divine 
accents,  was  a  very  light  tenor  indeed.  No, 
we  are  too  busy  to  listen  to  any  natural  voice. 
We  may  have  to  listen  to  the  bass  voice  elon- 
gated into  that  of  great  guns,  and  the  tenor 
voice  whining  as  shrapnel. 

No  one  has  more  frankly  acknowledged 
than  Sir  Rabindranath  that  West  and  East  are 
complementary  and  necessary  to  each  other. 
And  his  India,  especially  rich  in  humane  agri- 
culture and  humane  contemplation,  may  in 
due  time  become  the  real  reconcilement  of 
machinery  and  ideals.  Machines  in  India  may 
become  genuine  savers  of  labor,  and  genuine 
saviors  of  the  spirit.  A  mechanical  principle 
will  pass  through  barriers  of  caste  that 
nothing  else  will  penetrate.  Cars  and  cams 
may  induce  precisely  that  degree  of  imper- 

15 


sonal  intercourse  which  unites  a  population  of 
widely  varied  races  into  a  peaceful  and  demo- 
cratic whole.  Therefore  I  am  for  Hindu  stu- 
dents in  America. 

Meantime  in  the  trenches  and  the  dugouts 
the  sons  of  gentlemen  are  not  singing  McAn- 
drews'  hymn  to  the  steam  engine,  or  anything 
to  the  effect  that  East  and  West  shall  never 
meet.  What  they  ask  for  in  the  hospital  is 
volumes  that  will  remind  them  of  green  fields 
and  running  brooks,  of  Arden  and  of  Eden. 
And  some  of  them  are  reading  Gitanjali  and 
The  Gardener  and  Fruit-Gathering. 


16 


THIS  PAPER  WAS  WRITTEN  FOR  THE 
CHICAGO  LITERARY  CLUB  AND  WAS 
READ  BEFORE  THE  CLUB  ON  MONDAY 
EVENING,  JANUARY  THE  FIFTEENTH, 
NINETEEN  HUNDRED  AND  SEVENTEEN. 
EDITION,  TWO  HUNDRED  &  SEVENTY- 
FIVE  COPIES,  PRINTED  FOR  MEMBERS 
OF  THE  CLUB  IN  THE  MONTH  OF  JUNE, 
NINETEEN  HUNDRED  AND  SEVENTEEN. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 
LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


JAN  24  1958 


JUNio'64f; 


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LD  21A-50m-8,'57 
(C8481slO)476B 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


